The Rain Shadow
by Affirmed
Summary: Exhausted and disillusioned as she approaches graduation, Katniss escapes into the woods one afternoon and happens upon a sturdy, glorious blue unicorn. A fully unconventional rapport develops, and he ultimately invites her back to his homeland… a place ruled by magic. AU. Everlark.


The first time she saw the unicorn, she remained stock still for a solid two minutes and simply stared. It distantly registered that the creature before her just plain _was not possible_; yet it had somehow materialized in front of her, so she stood as a sentinel and drank in the materialization of impossible things.

His topaz blue coat rippled over his haunches even in the absence of movement as the majestic creature cropped habitually at the sprinkling of early spring grass. Bright, paler bursts of colour speckled his coat in luminous dapples, creating an intricate pattern weaving every variation of blue she could ever even conceptualize across the canvas of his hide. A thick, considerable mane exploded from his neck, dripping over both sides and seeming to gleam with intonations of gold, impossibly silky and soft, at one suggestive of both thick-banded rope and the finest molten silk. The sky colour of his coat deepened to an ocean blue around his knees before giving way to four white socks that gleamed like freshly-laundered stockings. His hooves gleamed like burnished gold from the finest goblet pristinely-maintained in a museum, dainty yet radiating the implication of inner steel.

He raised his head, in a movement flawlessly smooth and somehow more luminous than that of a standard equine, jaw working steadily as he chomped a mouthful of foliage. A thick white blaze started in a sizeable burst that encompassed most of his forehead and stretched down to envelop his upper and most of his bottom lip, seguing to pink around his mouth. And, in the center of that impossibly white forehead, an opalescent, glistening horn arched in the embodiment of cylindrical symmetry. It seemed to collect the stray sunbeams that streamed through the forest ceiling and stretch them into explosions of colour, such that it appeared to radiate small, perfect rainbows instead of the standard-issue light an ordinary reflective surface would impart.

He swallowed and then paused, in the manner that horses have of considering their surroundings for a moment prior to commencing whatever impulse had occurred to them. The customary cacophony of thoughts that rustled around her mind stilled as she focused on the magnificent creature, her inner dialogue silenced for a brief segment of undiluted appreciation.

She marveled at the wind that lapped the leaves and ushered pollen along to inspire new growth. The dappled sunlight seemed soothing when it reached her, stretching across her skin and inspiring an inner glow. Here and there branches shuffled and bushes quivered as animals scurried about their day, retrieving nesting materials or pursuing a source of sustenance. Everything seemed at once brighter, more profound, more captivating.

Some branches shifted overhead and a stream of sunlight illuminated her face, obscuring her vision. She squinted, a thick flush of aggravation ascending at the rudeness of nature inexplicably denying her the ability to continue admiring the glorious creature, and when she slipped forward, the unicorn had vanished.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Her life toppled back into the familiar cadence to which she had begrudgingly grown accustomed in her mid-twenties. She woke, imbibed enough coffee to caffeinate a small country, hit the gym, showered, reviewed her notes for the first class, had her first class, retreated to the library to prepare for her second class, had her second class, retreated to the library during the lunch hour to prepare for the third class, had the third class, just for a change of pace retreated to an empty classroom to prepare for her fourth class, had her fourth class, scrounged some food from the cafeteria, then headed home for the afternoon walk through the woods without which she would surely find herself devoid of sanity in a manner of days before returning to her apartment to prepare material for the following day's classes before tumbling into bed and hauling herself out five hours later to do it all again. She hoped at some point the miserable drudgery of the law school life would remit dividends.

And yet, the unicorn never strayed far from her thoughts. In classes when her fatigued gaze would funnel in a dazed stupor toward the chalkboard, she would swear she spotted the unicorn's silhouette gleaming among the legal terms. On the treadmill, she would sprint after his retreating hindquarters, her attention ostensibly captivated by a television screen. She would catch glimpses of him grazing outside the law library window, only fleetingly in the corner of her eye, evaporating beneath her full attention.

He never materialized, fully, in all his corporeal glory, the one place she wanted him to, where she could actually set her gaze upon him. Again and again during her afternoon break she trod the area of the initial sighting, covering additional territory with each excursion. She tried entering the woods in different areas, behind Mrs. Stosur's birdfeeders or Mr. Klizan's dilapidated picket fence. She tried settling in a tree and simply _waiting_, the rough bark grinding into her spine and stray branches casting pink divots into her skin. She even tried, in a fleeting moment of frivolity, whispering a plea to the universe.

Even after three weeks of fruitless searching, she assiduously refused to even entertain the possibility of the unicorn's permanent absence. The universe simply couldn't offer such a glorious glimpse of true living only to mercilessly yank it away, hauling the hope out beneath her feet. She was just so _tired_, bone-tired, unable to muster even the motivation to care about the fact that she no longer cared. She had burnt through her ambition during the first two and a half years of law school. Common parlance mandated that the first year they scared students to death, the second year they worked students to death and the third year they bored students to death, and she could provide firsthand evidence of this statement's accuracy. She had never found herself so close to dropping out as the third week into her final semester, as sheer exhaustion drained her of every motivation she thought she possessed. Glimpsing that unicorn had infused her with a renewed drive, a recalibrated interest in living. She _needed _this escape.

Mercifully, one perfectly ordinary Thursday after her Real Estate Transactions class, while the thick February wind carried the suggestion of snow and the clever North Wind attempted to deprive her of both her thick hunter-green cap and all sensation in her extremities, she spotted familiar blue hindquarters vanishing into shadow.

She eagerly slipped forward, positioning her feet deliberately and delicately so as to produce the minimum auditory evidence of her presence. She found herself acutely aware of everything, of her hair trickling against the back of her neck and her thick cargo pants catching on the back of her left calf, and also of everything except her and her target blurring into a white blaze of nothingness as she closed in on the turn that would take her to the object of her preoccupation.

Rounding the corner, delightful anticipation having deprived her of breath, she skidded to a halt, the frozen ground crunching beneath her boots, and managed to stop just an inch before she skewered herself on the proud tip of a pearlescent, spiraling, eerily sharp horn.

* * *

AN: Ensuing chapters will be longer, if there's interest. Should you find this composition in any way compelling, _please_ drop a review, would you? I'm curious as to whether anyone considers this tale worth pursuing, and would be extremely obliged!


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